You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - It's All About Bill Evans

Episode Date: June 29, 2022

Peter and Adam dive into a question on how to sound like Bill Evans.Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Adam. Yeah. You feeling a little green today? Feeling a little... Green Street. I'm Adam Anus. And I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast.

Jazz, comma, explained. Period. Well, you know what? It turns out it is a comma. Did you know that? Yeah, no, I just, by the way you always said it, sometimes you would say it like this, jazz. explain. There's got to be a common. That might even be a semi-colon. Well, you know why? Because

embarrassingly enough, even though I am one of the two executive producers of this program, I thought it was jazz, period, explained, period. And I happen to- Oh, that is embarrassing. Wow. Embarrassing that I would think it's that or that I didn't know what it actually is. I'm embarrassed for me. Well, okay. All right. Well, you're a co-executive producer, so there you go. Yeah, It's also my phone. I'm embarrassed for me. I'm always embarrassed for me and my grammar. No, no, no, it's all good.

But jazz, explain. Yeah, so I'm trying to get my thing. And as you know, I like to always relate this to how do we solo and stuff. Commas, period, semicolons, ampers stands. What's an ampersstand? I have no idea. It's, well, it's ampersand. Amper sand.

I call it an ampersand. It's the shift number seven on your keyboard. It's the and sign. But it's not actually and it's it's it is an ampersand and you know there are differences in how it's used within like publishing like it's like Peter and the word and Adam it's different than Peter ampersand Adam I'm not sure what I'm kind of losing my my train of thought on this actually as I is I is this is gripping this is gripping content if we were to look at the graph of our listeners right there it's just whoosh it just it was just like everybody fell off the cliff there of listenership Is that what the wooches for now? That is. I love the whoosh. Right.

Okay. So just to paint a picture here, everybody, I'm still here alone in the pod front. And Adam is at his home isolation studio. And so that's why I have full command of things like that, things like... Listen, we're talking about practice. You've got a lot of stuff here. It's a lot of power you usually wield. Yeah.

How are you feeling with that behind that big mothership of the board there? How you feeling? you're not stupid jazz is stupid that's how I'm feeling that's far the best one on there that's both of the office ones are the better yeah no I'm feeling good about this

and I've been enjoying our last episodes and looking forward I hear you're going to be doing some solo episodes out of extreme admiration for my recent solo episodes right or totally unrelated all of my episodes

are going to be analyzing your solo episodes that would be But one of my solo episodes, I'm analyzing you, analyzing Oscar. I'm telling you, it's going to turn into the Russian wooden hat toy, you know, it's going to take off that. It's going to be a feedback loop after a while, for sure. Now, I'm going to analyze that one first. I'm going to go right into it. No, I am excited about doing some solo episodes.

You're about to go on the road for a very, well, just not a super long time, but three weeks, I think, right, a month or so. Yeah. So we'll probably try to get some remote done, but we'll see how it goes. And if not, I'm here for the listener, I'm going to be doing some solo stuff. I've got some cool stuff. But are you here for the dear listeners? Our dear listeners. Yes, of course.

Of course I'm here for the dear listener. I'm here for the elk listener. I'm here for the moose listener. I was good. If we have any listeners, speaking of dear leaders, dear listeners in the North Korean, the Democratic Republic of,

you know, ironically, I believe the official name for that country is the Democratic Republic of, it's something like that. It's something that would definitely confuse. If we have any listeners up there, give us a shout out. I don't know how you would do that. But I'm going to tell you, I bet we do have some listeners.

This is the great thing about humans. Nothing is ever totally shut off. You know what I mean? Like whenever you're just like, those people never do that. These people, no, there's always someone that's figured out a way to do whatever it is we're saying. We find a way. Yeah, we find a way. Yeah.

Well, Peter, what do we got on deck today for our very last episode before you hit the road? So we have a listener question. which we always enjoy. This is quite a good one, as all of them. Well, no, not all of them are. We don't play the bad ones. We only play the good ones. But most of them usually are.

And just a reminder, you can go to you'll hear it.com if you'd like to leave us a speakpipe, which is a voice memo. And look, I think there's some shy people out there. I actually met some. They're like, I want to do a speak pipe, but I haven't got up my courage yet. I met a couple people on the road saying that. And just so you know, you have a chance to redo it. to reject it if you don't like it.

So it's not like you put it in and Adam and I are immediately listening to it. But feel free. We love the questions. We love hearing from you guys. We love featuring you on the show. So are you ready, Adam? I was born ready.

All right, here we go. This is Miro. Bye, bye. Oh, there he left. Sorry, I was at the end of it. All right, see, Miro. See you later, buddy. Peace.

Please leave your speak pipe at you're here. Hey Peter, this is Miro from Germany. First of all, I'm a huge fan of the podcast. Thank you. It always makes my day because I listen to it while breakfast or something. And yeah, I'm now learning on Green Dolphin Street. And I listen to different versions. And the one I like the most is like the Bill Evans version in the trio with Philly Joe Jones and Paul Chambers.

And like the one thing that catched me the most is like not only how he plays. plays like the melody but like the solo stuff and I was wondering how he does that because he don't place any single lines really he really plays like cards and creates so nice melodies with these chords and he has so many different voicings for different chords and I was just wondering how he's doing this and how you can practice like this like melodic um like melodic improvising with chords and yeah I was just wondering

if you could like do an episode about that yeah thank you and bye bye all right and done should we hear the track first yeah and we go on yeah let's let's do it yeah because I was not from I mean I listened to it a little bit before this because I was trying to find

I mean I have so many different memories of versions that Bill Evans has done that I've heard over the years but I don't I think I had heard this one. So let's give it a listen. Have you heard this? Yeah. So just before we, before we play it, this is from a very kind of weird album called on Green Dauphin Street that was released in the mid-70s. But it was recorded, a good chunk of it was recorded in 1959 between everybody digs Bill Evans and Portion and Jazz.

It's PC and Philly Joe. Could anything more have been recorded in 1959? What the hell was going on that year? Shape of Jazz to come kind of blue. Everybody digs Bill Evans. this? I know. I know.

Well, okay, so here it is on Green Dolphin Street, Bill Evans, uh, PC and Philly Joe. Okay, love it already. All right.

Peter, go ahead. Explain. Okay. So in the first measure, he starts on an E. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So Miro, it's a great, first of all, a great, great call and a great inspiration for you to learn the tune. And it's a great solo too.

And, and you should, uh, go check it out for yourself, uh, dear listener and listen to the whole thing. And we'll, I think we got plenty

from that first chorus on the vibe of the chordal solos. But it would be like a, that's a lifetime of, of a master playing. Yeah. To explain all that away. But I think we could probably give you some good places to start to get this sound. Yeah. So the first thing that really strikes me on this is, although it's obviously a cordal solo, not quartal, but a chordal solo, a chord bass solo, a block chord fiesta.

as you might have been able to hear, of course. But if you listen to what's happening melodically at any time, which is typically or predominantly on the top of the chords, but sometimes it's in the middle and sometimes it's at the bottom too, but probably 80, 90% seems to be from the top of what he's playing. It's very much the kinds of phrases and lines and just general improvisatory flare that Bill Evans has when he's single lining over the same two.

You know what I mean? So he's definitely hearing, like, he's not taking just like block chord patterns that he wants to throw into this. Like he's hearing a melodic improvisation, which makes it even more impressive, you know. It's, it's in the, even the phrasing and the dynamics and like the lilt and the swing and the feel and everything is very much Bill Evans. Now, there's, there's for sure, you know, a Nacken Cole influence there. And probably Errol Garner and, you know, just in terms of and, and, and. you know, the approach to George Shearing for sure. Yeah.

But I think that the thing that really sets it apart is being able to hear. Now, you're not going to be able to just jump from the beginning and be able to hear lines like Bill Evans. Nobody can do that. But you can. Even if you were just getting the single note on the top. Yeah. Like that in itself is a study, you know. Exactly.

And that might be a good place to start, you know, and then sort of build up from there. And also like. And also like. Top note just melodically. Yeah, exactly. And then what you can start to do is like check out the places where he leaves the chords. It's not a lot of places, but they're very important places and where those are placed within the phrase. Because that's part of, I think, the sound that you might be liking.

I know that's part of the thing that makes it unique is when, you know, anytime we set up a pattern to how we're playing, especially when we're improvising and we've got the ability but also the responsibility to like make that journey have some kind of tension and release. when you set up a pattern for the listener, once you leave that and they come back to it, it's such an interesting thing. And so Bill Evans was a master of doing that with a lot of this sort of pianistic things like phrasing and dynamics and just the musicality in general and feel.

But as he's going through, you know, playing very thick with all the chords and any time he leaves that, that's going to be a big break in the pattern. So you want to kind of analyze and learn from him in how he does that because that's something that you can start doing right away. That's right. And you might notice when he leaves the chords like that, what is going on in the intro?

Yeah, exactly. And on that note, let's listen to a quick word from our sponsor. All right. And we're back. Yes. So one thing you might have noticed, Mira, when you hear him leave the course completely, is that the octave is still intact. So what Bill's playing here is an octave-based delivery device is like what we call it. So we're the key of E-flat here. You can also start with just octaves, you know. Start soloing. You can learn the top line of this solo melodically with octaves. And then you can hear Bill. I mean, there's certainly he's using some of the sort of six diminished, even though that wasn't a thing back then.

You know, the word of call it. He's using those concepts you might hear Barry Harris talk about. You might hear Hank Jones play or George Shearing play, these sort of like diminished teutonic movement. but a lot of it, Mero, is like basically playing octaves and putting a chord in between, you know? So, and that can really, like, there's no, I'm sure he's not thinking of every single note of every single voicing, but he's putting in like an E flat minor sound over the E flat chord and then improvising, you know, with obviously voicing that he knows really well.

But it's almost certainly one note in the left and then four, or four or three notes in the right on a lot of this stuff. Which is less than it sounds like. Way less, yeah. But you can hear also when he leaves he'll do stuff like, and that's how you know that he's probably doing that. When he's doing that thing. Yeah.

That's got to be octaves, right? Yep. So you could start there. You can start very simply by just trying to get a general feel of like an E flat major. just find a chord and try to move the outside notes. So when you say find a chord, do you mean like find unacord? One cord?

That's a throwback in the biz. That's what we call that. A throwback. Callback. Shoot. I'm sure some of our listeners are calling it a throw up. But does that make sense? Is that what you're hearing as well, Peter?

Some kind of like, there's like an octave thing he's doing. He's probably filling in chords. And of course, there's probably some. some of diminished things happening in there, but it's mostly probably just like once you can kind of scale run over the changes, you can fill in the chord

between the octaves essentially. Yeah, for sure. You do this thing all the time. Yeah, I mean, I think too, I wasn't paying close attention to this, but thinking back, he was probably playing, well, he was definitely doing some chromatic stuff and he might have gone to a single line

or just to an octave and then back to the chord some of those times. That would be something interesting to listen for is like when because it is like we were saying, it's very much the way he improvised single lines. So it's more like a choice of when you go to non-core tones or chromatic things like leading into it. I don't have my keyboard right now. So I'm playing it, but it's like air piano. So it's only in my mind.

But I can kind of imagine the types of things just from hearing. I mean, that's the cool thing is like when you start to learn these master's styles, like you. like you start to see so much that they repeat like when you really analyze it and at first you're kind of like oh they're not that great but when you listen to it you're like oh no they still are great

it's like they their vocab it's very inspiring to me to know that they had this I mean I think to people that are just getting interested they're like what are you talking about it seems like they're doing so much and they are for sure

it's a wide palette but the great players kind of had had their thing and their thing is not as big possible as big as you might think but they can play it in a way. Don't project Herbie's thing on Bill's thing or Burrell's thing on Witton's thing. Exactly. Everybody had their own thing.

Yeah. And then there was a lot of, I mean, obviously Bill Evans to like the pianist that came right after him like Herbie Hancock and Chick Korea and stuff. I mean, there was overlap as well. But he was very influential on all the pianists later. But there was other inspirations and there was different amounts that everybody took. Let's listen to that chorus one more time. Yeah.

Yeah, so you can hear that. Like that just happened. Yeah. Like you think that's all chords. Right. But there are single note lines in there. Yeah. In octaves.

Yeah. So that's how you kind of know he's doing that. Yeah, there. That was single line, like leading up to that with a little bit of that chromatic thing. That's pretty high level. Yeah. And he's given a lot of attention to the shape of the line still. Like a lot of times people go to like block chords.

and it's just like everything becomes super vertical, but he's giving it like... He's got his Bill Evans thing going on, you know? Yeah, he's got his Bill Evans stuff down for sure. I don't know if I've heard... I don't know, I guess I haven't played this much chordal stuff. But not from the get-go, though? Well, yeah, exactly.

And usually, you know, he's more known for that thing where he... Right. Well, he'll pick a voicing in his left hand. Yeah, some kind of block chord voicing. Yep. Yeah. miles like that, I know. Yeah, bounce it with his right.

So, no, it's really interesting. Cool. Well, Miro, great question. Yes. And good luck on your journey with that. I hope you've helped. But it's definitely like an octave, you know, not, of course, not the whole thing, but centered around an octave thing. Everything Peter mentioned about the shape of the line and when he leaves the chords and all that stuff.

Yeah. Couldn't be more important. And at the very least, you could just get the melody of the top itself and you'll be good to go, man. And then there's always the option to... I'll play it and tell you what it is later. Yep. That's always an option. Just don't even worry about it.

So, big shout out, look, big shout out to Miro and all of our foreign language speak pipers for getting up and speaking in English when it's not your first language so well. I'm so impressed with that because I'm learning German. I don't know if I mentioned that to you, Adam. I've been learning a little bit of German. I'm actually taking lessons. And learning a language is hard. And like, I couldn't imagine calling into a German podcast and asking such a coherent and intelligent question. A musical question, too, which is a whole other.

I know. I know. And like cords and all these crazy words. So anyway, big shout out to Miro and everybody. I mean, look, we had a question the other day from another foreigner, which I was impressed with from the UK. I mean, speaking English fairly well. I was, oh, sorry. Okay.

That was a joke. Bada bing. Bada boom. Bada boom. Big shout out to all of our international listeners. all of our international listeners. And yeah, U.S. listeners step up your game. That's two speak pipes in a row from outside the old USFA.

So if we got any U.S. listeners, give us a shout. If you're from Florida and you want to try to speak English, come on, get upon here. We can do that. Dang, you can say that because you're from there. Exactly. Thank you. Thank you for saving me there. Central Florida in 1970.

You're in the house. All right. We got anything else? Yeah. I'll do it, Peter. Until next time. You'll hear it. We'll hear it.